Can you explain the design process in eleven minutes and sixteen seconds? If you’re designer Kevin Young, Managing Principal at Continuum, you can. In this TEDxBeaconStreet talk, he reveals the formula for creating innovative designs that are sure to release a flood of endorphins. Through a series of examples, highlighting both brilliant and disastrous ideas, Kevin opens a window into the mind of the designer and shares his insights into how to create a powerful emotional connection between people and objects. Sharing his experience as manager of the One Laptop Per Child project at the MIT Media Lab, he explains both the process and the point of the successful endeavor and how it exemplifies the teamwork, creativity and attention to detail required to serve the needs of any given consumer.

Designer Jon Friedman, the Co-Founder of Freight Farms, explains how lateral thinking got its start and how this creative problem solving technique can help us all create a more sustainable society. He illustrates how this can be done with the global food supply system, which accounts for a third of the carbon footprint humans leave on the earth. All it takes is something that we already have, shipping containers! By redesigning commercial agriculture to focus on people, planet and profit, his team at Freight Farms is turning a global food crisis into a global food surplus by re-purposing shipping containers.

Using trumpet, piano, and voice, David opens a window into his musical life and invites the audience to join him for a number of his songs, preceding each one with a short history. Using music to tell stories, David delights and engages preschoolers and grandparents alike. David Polansky claims to have never grown up but has been writing music for over 50 years and has performed it for thousands of delighted listeners who attend his concerts and listen to recordings of his songs.

Ashley Stanley founded Lovin’ Spoonfuls in 2012, based on her realization that the “There is Not Enough” model of food drives was inherently flawed. While eating in a restaurant with her mother in 2010, Ashley suddenly became aware of just how much leftover food was going to waste. A little research that included both Googling and knocking on the back door of Trader Joe’s to see what was being thrown away revealed that an unbelievable amount of usable food was being discarded.

Her dream of being a professional athlete might have ended with blowing out both of her knees, but it placed her on the path that led to her present work. In the past 3 years she has brought the city of Boston together to fight hunger and food insecurity with fresh, healthy food and been honored by the Boston Business Journal and Oxfam International for her efforts.

The TEDx Global Music Project is a collection of the best live music from TEDx events around the world. This initiative is to sound what TEDx is for the world of ideas; namely, a genre-defying library of passionate performances curated locally from over 140 countries. The TEDx Global Music Project is an opportunity for innovative musicians to reach a global audience and a chance for the world to redefine what music can be.

The TEDx Global Music Project is independently organized by a group of TEDx licensees around the globe, not created by TED.

Amy Robinson (@amyleerobinson) is the Creative Director of EyeWire, a game to map the brain from MIT. She founded and runs the TEDx Global Music Project, a collection of the best live music from TEDx events, which can be found at https://soundcloud.com/tedxglobalmusicproject

TEDx veteran Ramy Nassar shares how TEDx events have spread around the world and how a growing global community of organizers is working together to promote ideas worth spreading, with thousands of independently organized TEDx events happening every year.

Ramy Nassar is the organizer of TEDxWaterloo and TEDxYouth@Waterloo and has been involved with TEDx events around the world, including TEDxAthens, TEDxCERN and the first ever TEDxSummit.

About this blog

TEDxBeaconStreet is a Greater Boston TEDx founded on the mission IDEAS IN ACTION, with speakers carefully curated for a free conference series: TEDxBeaconStreet and TEDxBeaconStreetYouth. Save the date for our next conference Nov. 16 and 17.
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